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      France Cheers For ‘Starmania,’ Its Favorite Musical

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      Songs from “Starmania” are frequently heard and covered in France, but until a new production opened in Paris, few had a chance to see the 1979 rock opera onstage.PARIS — Imagine a musical so beloved that on opening night, its lyricist receives a standing ovation before the show even starts. That’s what happened here Tuesday night. As the songwriter walked to his seat, the audience at La Seine Musicale couldn’t contain their excitement — starting with Brigitte Macron, the wife of President Emmanuel Macron of France.No, this musical wasn’t “Les Misérables.” (In fact, while it was originally created in French, few people in the country are aware of the existence of “Les Miz,” or the wild popularity of its English-language version.) The occasion was the long-awaited return of “Starmania,” a dystopian rock opera that has turned into a singular French phenomenon since it was first heard in the 1970s.Of the numbers co-written by Michel Berger, who died in 1992, and Luc Plamondon, whose appearance triggered the ovation on Tuesday, at least 15 — like “Need For Love” and “The World Is Stone” — are frequently heard and covered in the world of French popular music, with their eloquent lyrics that speak of loneliness, power struggles and rebellion. Yet “Starmania” itself has been elusive onstage.It’s not entirely surprising: Like many examples of the rock opera, a genre born in Britain in the 1960s, “Starmania” started life as a concept album, albeit one with a complex, multicharacter plot set in a futuristic global city, Monopolis. The first theatrical run, in 1979, lasted only a month, and the last full stage production in France — a country where musical theater isn’t especially popular — was back in the 1990s. An English version, “Tycoon,” written by Tim Rice, was released as an album starring Cyndi Lauper, Céline Dion and Tom Jones in 1992, but never took off in theaters.This poses unique challenges for any director looking to tackle “Starmania.” Even as the songs remained cultural touchstones, the narrative’s twists and turns have faded from memory. For instance, few know that “The Businessman’s Blues,” an idealistic number about an entrepreneur who yearns to be an artist, is actually sung by Zéro Janvier, a disingenuous real estate tycoon turned fascist political leader.It was time to rediscover Berger and Plamondon’s socially prescient work. In Monopolis, the capital of the newly unified West, Janvier is running for president on a law-and-order platform, against the environmentalist Gourou Marabout. Around them, would-be Monopolis influencers chase fame on TV, while a gang of punk rebels, the Black Stars, sow violence in the streets.The current, pandemic-delayed revival at La Seine Musicale, an impersonal venue in the Paris suburb of Boulogne, was entrusted to Thomas Jolly. This 40-year-old director is having a banner year: In September, he was announced as the artistic director of the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics, a plum job that will put him in the international spotlight. While Jolly’s flamboyant style has long been divisive with French critics, his fondness for laser lights and over-the-top special effects may serve him well on the Olympic stage, and it is on full display in “Starmania.”Manet-Miriam Baghdassarian as Sadia in “Starmania.”Anthony DorfmannI can’t recall ever seeing so much lighting equipment. The lighting design — or rather, the laser choreography — was created by Thomas Dechandon, and several key numbers are sung without sets, under a canopy of lights flashing furiously to the beat. Right before the climax of “The Businessman’s Blues,” trap doors open onstage, and a small army of additional spotlights rear their mole-like heads.Eye-watering electricity bill aside, it is a staging choice that wows at first, yet offers diminishing returns over the course of the three-hour show. Perhaps because of the demands of touring, since “Starmania” will be performed around France, Belgium and Switzerland over the next year, Emmanuelle Favre’s sets are fairly minimal. A rotating, towerlike structure is the most distinctive element, and effective when representing Naziland, the nightclub where Janvier awaits the election results.Berger and Plamondon created an improbably rich world, and there was room to imagine just how Monopolis — a city of skyscrapers and underground tunnels — might feel. Yet even the Underground Café, whose waitress Marie-Jeanne acts as the story’s narrator, is a quasi-blank space.The real star of “Starmania,” though, is the music. Not only does each of the eight lead roles have at least one vocally acrobatic solo turn, but most audience members still have the exact texture and phrasing of past performers in mind. In a nod to the 1970s cast, the well-known French singer France Gall appears in a hologram in one scene.Gall’s silhouette drew applause, as did many of the songs — not when they ended, but as soon as the first words were heard. At least a dozen times over the course of the first night, the six-strong band and singers would start a number, only to be drowned out by cries of joy. Rather than a new production, “Starmania” often felt like a collective trip down memory lane, tapping into layers of emotion that have accumulated over decades.The weight of expectations must be daunting, but the large cast of singers from France and Canada were brilliantly fearless. (Unforgivably, their names weren’t listed anywhere in the theater or on the production’s website.) David Latulippe avoided egregious villain mannerisms as Janvier, and had a superb match in Magali Goblet (known as Maag), who brings weary depth to the role of Stella Spotlight, a broken actress Janvier seeks out as his consort.Stella gets some of the most virtuosic, heartbreaking numbers, starting with “The Farewell of a Sex Symbol,” which lays bare the mental health toll of being objectified as a young actress. The cult of celebrity, and its darker side, are the overarching theme of the plot. In the musical, “Starmania” is the name of a TV show that promises instant fame to a lucky few. Ziggy (Adrien Fruit), a record dealer, falls into that trap, abandoning his friend Marie-Jeanne to chase success with Janvier.As Marie-Jeanne, Jolly and his team cast a nonbinary performer who uses male pronouns, Alex Montembault. He is the heart and soul of the show, with an understated simplicity that contrasts with showier personalities, like Manet-Miriam Baghdassarian, who brings darkly intimidating energy to the gender-fluid character of Sadia, a Black star described as a transvestite.The word may be dated, but here again, “Starmania” makes space for questions around gender that are far more common today than they were in the 1970s. And it does so with a songbook so saturated with memories for many who have grown up in France that there is joy — and occasionally melancholy — in simply mouthing along to the lyrics.Jolly has crafted a production that may not be subtle, but it is generic and spectacular enough to make space for newcomers as well as audience members who grew up with “Starmania.” After over two decades without an opportunity to see it onstage, that’s enough of a gift.Starmania. Directed by Thomas Jolly. La Seine Musicale, through Jan. 29. More

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      Anne Bogart Is Not Entirely Retiring

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      The theater director Anne Bogart first made a splash with the radical student productions she put on while teaching at New York University in the early 1980s. Her “South Pacific” (1984), for example, was conceived as the show that veterans in a mental institution performed as part of their therapy. Legend has it that the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate snuffed out the production, but Bogart clarified that it simply denied an extension. “It’s more dramatic to say they shut us down,” she said, chuckling.Under Bogart’s leadership, the New York City-based Saratoga International Theater Institute (SITI) Company, formed by a group of artists in 1992, spent three decades exploring experimental outposts in both original creations like “Bob,” “The Medium” and “Hotel Cassiopeia” and re-imaginings of classics, often by ancient Greek playwrights.The group’s emphasis was on rigorous actor training and the performers’ physicality. Bogart’s approach involves “decentering emotion and re-centering the body,” said Jay Wegman, the director of N.Y.U. Skirball, which presented SITI’s “Radio Macbeth” last month. “I love how metaphorical her work is. It becomes an event, and there’s almost a mystical feeling because everything comes together so tightly in her stagings.”Now, SITI is ending its producing activities. “It came down to whether we are an institution — in which case you get a younger, more diverse company and a young artistic director — or a group of people,” Bogart, 71, said. “After a great deal of quite emotional discussion, we decided that we’re a group of people. I think that the legacy is more how we offer a model for future young companies: a collaborative ensemble whose focus is not on real estate but on the plays they do.”Bogart, center, with Kelly Maurer as Andy Warhol in a 1990s production of “Culture of Desire.” Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBogart is not entirely retiring. She will remain a professor in Columbia University’s directing program, whose alumni include Rachel Chavkin, Jay Scheib, Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page, until 2026. She will also continue to direct on a freelance basis.Although SITI is presenting “A Christmas Carol” at Bard College (spearheaded by the co-director Darron L West) from Dec. 16-18, this felt like a good time to look back, especially since the company’s digital archives are going live on its website on Nov. 15, and a book, “SITI Company: This Is Not a Handbook,” is due soon via Yonkers International Press. Bogart spoke in a video chat from London shortly after the latest (and last) SITI gala. The event prefaced a revival of the company’s production of “War of the Worlds” and turned into a heartfelt tribute to the director. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What were some of the fundamental things that you all agreed on when starting SITI?The actors met at a diner and asked each other: “What does it mean to be a SITI Company member?” Every year they renewed that question, and they always had the same answer: We train together. It’s the cement that’s kept us going over time. Not only do they train together and learn together, but they teach that training, which makes sure they have a paycheck year-round. My own proposal to them was that I had all these theatrical essays I wanted to create. We didn’t expect it to last as long as it did, but I did need a group of people who would work together over time and solve problems together.How did you manage your freelance activities with SITI?I do a lot of opera outside. I always felt that was the least stressful for SITI Company: If I’m going to do opera, nobody can complain, because they can’t sing like opera singers. I still have a big appetite for all those things. That hasn’t changed.Where did you find inspiration when you started out?I came to New York in 1974, at the end of the Judson Church era, and I was very influenced by dance. It was also the explosion of theater companies like the Performance Group, which later became the Wooster Group, André Gregory’s Manhattan Project, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater, and with the crazy work of Richard Foreman and the big wild things of Bob Wilson. I was also completely in love with German theater — particularly Peter Stein, Klaus Michael Grüber, Luc Bondy — and I stole from them a lot.Bogart with her wife, Rena Chelouche Fogel, in October at the Laurie Beechman Theater.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesIs that why you temporarily moved to Europe in the early 1980s?I decided I hated Americans and I was going to be German. But what I discovered is that I’m actually very American: I have an American sense of humor, an American sense of structure. And I’m really interested in American history — a lot of my work since then has been about Americans like Orson Welles, Bob Rauschenberg, Joseph Cornell.What are some of the big theatrical trends you’ve seen coming and going over the past decades?I was part of the generation who just admired directors. I used to follow Bob Wilson and Lee Breuer on the street! Then I noticed that people weren’t naming directors, they were naming companies, like Complicité, for example. That lasted for about a decade. Now the revolution is happening in playwriting, where extraordinary new voices are challenging the old forms. “An Octoroon” — that’s a radical play. So it’s gone from director to company to playwright.How have theater directors themselves changed?I’m surprised by how little they are interested in the regional theater. We have these theater factories around the country that used to be where everybody wanted to go, and it’s not so attractive right now. What is attractive are the art centers, and SITI Company has lived in the realm of the art centers, like the Krannert, the Walker, the Hancher, U.C.L.A. Directors like Rachel Chavkin or Diane Paulus are also looking at commercial models in new ways. When I was younger Broadway was not of interest to me, but the young directors are intrigued.What do you make of theater in the Covid era?We’re in a very interesting moment. The wonderful Scottish philosopher William MacAskill has a theory that every time there’s a cataclysmic event, there’s a period of plasticity in which change happens, and then soon afterwards we clamp down into a new accepted way of being. I think we’re in that moment of plasticity. What comes out on the other side? You or I can’t know.Whose work do you like these days?I got really interested in the work of Stan Lai, a Taiwanese director who’s rethinking the way audiences and plays function. I’m always interested in what Ivo van Hove is thinking about. I have a hate/love relationship with [Romeo] Castellucci: I cannot stand his work most of the time, but I have to deal with it. I guess what I’m looking for is somebody throwing down the gauntlet.“I got really interested in the work of Stan Lai, a Taiwanese director who’s rethinking the way audiences and plays function,” Bogart said.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesDo you think there’s been a renewed interest in the relationship between audiences and theater, especially since Covid?I think that’s what the frontier is right now. My friend [and one of SITI’s artistic directors] Leon Ingulsrud went to the theater the other day. I asked how it was and he said, “Not so good — the actors never said hello to the audience.” I thought that was really interesting. The acknowledgment of that relationship, or how an audience interfaces, is the prize, I think.But how do you do that? Wouldn’t it be distracting?“Bob” [1998] starts with him literally saying hi — there’s a moment of interface, where everybody comes together. In Ivo van Hove’s “More Stately Mansions” [1997] the actors came out onstage, bowed to each other and to the audience, then Joan MacIntosh started speaking at top speed the first monologue of that O’Neill play. I started hearing the thump of people leaving the seats. They just couldn’t stand it. But in a way, that’s also like saying hi. At first I thought, “Damn him, I could never do that — I’m an American, I’m about populist art.”OK, but in all honesty, you’re not really thought of as a populist director.Deep down, yes, it’s in me. It’s how I was brought up. At the beginning of SITI Company we were kind of, “[expletive] the audience.” I don’t feel that at all anymore. I feel that the point of being there is the audience — it’s all about the audience. More

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      Review: ‘You Will Get Sick’ Tells the Untellable, for a Price

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      In a new Off Broadway play, Linda Lavin shines as a woman paid to say what an ailing young man cannot.Disease, dying and death are usually depicted as wretched or bloody onstage. We’re meant to cry or recoil.As you might guess from its title, though, “You Will Get Sick,” which opened on Sunday at the Laura Pels Theater, is more matter-of-fact. It seems to promise a bald memento mori in the form of a fortune cookie.Yet the play, written by Noah Diaz, directed by Sam Pinkleton and starring the evergreen Linda Lavin, is far more than that. Neither prosaic nor clinical, it defies all expectations for a story in which the main character receives a fatal diagnosis, telling the tale in the most lively, surreal and surprising ways imaginable.For one thing, Lavin, who is 85, does not play the character who’s ill. Turning the template upside down, she instead plays the caregiver, Callan — if you can call someone a caregiver whose every act of care is minutely monetized. Never lifting a finger without naming a price, she’s more like an end-of-life TaskRabbit, having answered an ad from a man seeking someone to listen to him admit that he’s sick.That he can’t actually say the word reflects on the way his life as a millennial — he’s in his 30s — has failed to prepare him to envision such a fate. But for his initial payment of $20, he purchases the opportunity to practice his confession by telling Callan that his limbs are growing numb as his illness progresses. Soon he will be paying her more to break the news to his narcissistic sister (Marinda Anderson) and others in his orbit. Even his co-workers don’t know why he hasn’t been at work.The playwright, making his New York debut, is withholding too. He elects not to name the character (he’s simply called #1 in the script) or even the disease, which resembles multiple sclerosis. But in Daniel K. Isaac’s typically and appealingly restrained performance, we understand much more. This is a man who protects himself against too much feeling by keeping the flow of information to a minimum. The flow of money replaces it.From left, Marinda Anderson, Isaac and Lavin. All the actors except Isaac play multiple roles.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSuch omissions and substitutions are part of the play’s overall approach. We never do hear #1 say the things he wants said; that service is provided instead by a disembodied narrator (Dario Ladani Sanchez) and of course by Callan, who, aside from the paid-for retellings, turns the story into a monologue for her night-school acting class.If this Cubist approach sounds too clever, it is in fact functional. The second-person narration (“Your hand goes numb,” says the voice) reproduces in the audience the sensation of dissociation #1 feels as his body starts to operate independently of his will. And the third-person monologue (“His balance isn’t right,” Callan declaims) demonstrates how our stories, even when buried, may yet leach into the world.For Diaz, theater is clearly part of that process; the slightly indulgent acting class sequences engage in some affectionate if too easy satire. (“There is no can’t,” says the teacher. “There is sometimes cannot … There is mostly maybe … We call that do.”) Yet when #1 accompanies Callan to a session one evening, the trite instruction to “live inside our bodies” becomes, in a quietly joyful moment between them, profound, experienced from opposing side of wellness.Lavin’s wit is in full bloom playing a woman who, unlike herself, is a terrible actor and a worse singer. (When prompted to walk like a lion, she’s suddenly Gwen Verdon doing Fosse.) Callan is as rich as any role she’s had in years — and even richer in some ways, because it doesn’t trade, as her characters in “Our Mother’s Brief Affair” and “The Lyons” did, on her innate glamour. Far from it: Her Callan is that woman you see on the subway, pawing through a dirty tote bag, her auburn perm three inches grown out.And yet, as a foul-mouthed, don’t-mess-with-me urban lady with sincere if hopeless dreams in her head, Lavin has never seemed more vital, sly and fearless. When she admits that she wants to play Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” — to which #1 incredulously responds, “Did this Dorothy see the trials of war and age 60 years?” — you somehow feel the deep sense of the ludicrous self-casting.Such underground connections are at the heart of “You Will Get Sick”; Diaz is working a surrealist vein that doesn’t mean to make an argument so much as to plant the seeds of one you can have with yourself later. That all the actors except Isaac play multiple roles — Nate Miller plays seven, marvelously — suggests layers of correspondence among them. Most of Miller’s are fearful, for instance, and Anderson’s are all hilariously tin-eared. When #1’s body starts turning into hay, you may begin to see that they are familiar archetypes as well.Anderson, above center, leads Isaac, Lavin and Nate Miller in animal exercises during an acting class.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe hay — not to mention the marauding birds, “The Wizard of Oz” and the narrative legerdemain — could easily have made “You Will Get Sick” too self-consciously poetic, its spray of images dissipating too quickly. But Diaz, who is 29, has had time to refine and tighten the script since he wrote it in drama school in 2018. In any case, it flies by, feeling even shorter yet fuller than its 85 minutes, especially as the imagery coalesces in a neat pull of strings at the end.That a play in which sadness is always biting at your fingers comes off this light and funny in performance requires a great deal of discipline. Some of that clearly comes from Pinkleton, whose direction trusts the material deeply enough to ask the audience to come toward it instead of the other way around. No surprise that he is also a choreographer, nominated for a Tony Award for his work on “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812”; he’s alert to the play’s internal rhythms.The Roundabout Theater Company production is also alert technically, with a trick box of a set by the design collective dots, lighting by Cha See, costumes by Michael Krass and Alicia Austin, and — especially — a powerful sound design, both apocalyptic and psychological, by Lee Kinney. He helps you believe in the existence of the soul, and also the forces that threaten it.If this all makes “You Will Get Sick” sound avant-garde and difficult, that’s part of the problem Diaz is addressing. Disease, dying and death are the opposite of avant-garde; they’re old news. And they’re difficult only in the way old news is: They happen to other people, always in the past. When it comes to our own demise, we don’t want to talk about it. Perhaps that’s why, in “You Will Get Sick,” we gladly pay Diaz to do it for us.You Will Get SickThrough Dec. 11 at the Laura Pels Theater; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. More